Drew’s Shop

Today in the Grade 2 and Special Needs classes the students learned how to ask how much something costs, and to say they wanted to buy it. To give them practice, I brought in a bunch of stuff from home, and set up “Drew’s Shop” where they could buy what they wanted (well, borrow it for a couple minutes). Some kids found having to come to the front of the class to talk to me terrifying, but others seemed to really like it. A couple of them were even bold enough to try out the line “Can you give me a discount?” Popular items included my hat and sunglasses, as well as the English manga I brought from Canada (kids in a different class asked me about it at lunch). Anyway, I took a couple pictures:

Music in My Car

My car has a radio and a cassette player, so my choices for music while driving all over Hyogo are pretty limited. I bought an FM transmitter to play the music from my PSP, but then I either have to leave it in the car (which makes me nervous even in Japan), or take it with me whenever I leave. I found a solution to this problem while I was reading an article on Ars Technica’s website about iPod shuffle killers. I thought an iPod shuffle was basically what I wanted, but I didn’t want to spend around about $100 on one (they cost more here for some reason), and I didn’t want to have to run iTunes on my computer. The Creative Zen Stone mentioned in the article was pretty much exactly what I was looking for, so I bought one while in Hiroshima. It happened to be on sale, making it only about $40. I think that’s pretty good considering it’s a 1GB mp3 player that is only slightly larger than the current iPod shuffle, and it works like a USB key for storing music.

Anyway, the actual reason I wrote this post (besides to get Ryan to list all the ways Apple makes the best products known to man) was because I am unfortunately not very music literate, and would like some suggestions. So, let me know what you think I might like, and I’ll download it (I think it’s legal here…)

Hiroshima

Since the last three days were a holiday weekend (Respect for Aged Day I believe), I decided to visit Hiroshima. Since everyone else already had other plans, I went alone, which was a first for me. Everything went fine though, which was a pleasant surprise, and I really enjoyed the whole trip (well not really the 6.5 hour train ride each way).

Travelling was a lot easier than I expected it to be actually. Most signs were in romanji, and the schedule I got from Hyperdia was completely accurate. The times when I was unsure about which platform to be on (every transfer) there was always a group of highschool girls to ask. Interestingly there are tons of highschool girls all over the place, in uniform, on both weekends and holidays, but their male counterparts are nowhere to be seen. Anyway, I got to Hiroshima and then had to find my capsule hotel which was a bit more difficult. In Japan street names are often written in kanji, which I can’t read, so I used Google Earth to find the postal area and then drew a map as best I could. I did pretty well, and I was able to get within one street of the place and then I asked for directions at a convenience store. When I got to the hotel receptionist she already had my key ready. I wonder how she was able to pick out my name among the names of all the salarymen in only the time it took me to get from the front door to her desk… Anyway, the capsule wasn’t actually as small as I expected (I was able to sit up and stretch out fine), and the hotel was only about a 20min walk from everything.

Hiroshima turned out to be a very nice place to visit, and luckily it was small enough that I got to see much of it in the time I had. It was a bit weird to stand directly below the spot where an atomic bomb exploded, but I guess really no weirder than being in the death chamber of Dachau or Anne Frank’s house. The memorial park was really nice, even though it rained most of the time I was there. At one end, across the river so not really in the park, is the A-Bomb Dome. This building is directly below the area where the bomb exploded, just beside the T-shaped bridge was the intended target. The building has been left as it was after the blast as a reminder. Inside the park there are several memorials including one about Sadako and the paper cranes. Oddly I read this story with two of my classes the day before actually seeing the memorial. Sadako developed leukemia as a result of radiation poisoning when she was 10 and tried to fold 1000 paper cranes so she could make a wish, but died before she finished. At one end of the park is a memorial museum that I found very impressive. Not only was it only ¥50 (less than $0.50) admission, it was also much more objective than I expected it to be. The United States is not demonized in my opinion, nor are the Japanese shown to be innocent. In fact there is even reference to the forced immigration of Korean labourers (who would make up 10% of those killed in the explosion), as well as the Nanking massacre.

The rest of Hiroshima was fairly typical: there were several department stores, as well as a covered shopping district. I spent a lot of time wandering through stores both to avoid the rain and to get out of the insane heat.

I also took a ferry to an island called Miyajima near Hiroshima that is home to the floating torii, which is considered one of the three best sights in Japan. The island was really nice. It was full of deer that were not afraid of people at all, as well as a small shopping area that mostly sold souvenirs. I stayed there until it started to rain again, and then went back to Hiroshima for the night.

Overall the trip was great, and I’m glad I went. Since this is long enough, here are the pictures:

See the whole album

Special Needs Class

Today was the first time I taught the Special Needs class with Kakio sensei. There are four kids in the class, and since I probably shouldn’t use their names (nor do I remember them all), I’ll refer to the kids as N, K, M1 and M2. N and K are female and the Ms are male (those are the first letters of their names). The Special Needs class was pretty much unlike any of the other classes I’ve seen, but also unlike an equivalent class in Canada. It was pretty hard to judge their grasp of English, both because I don’t know how old they all were, nor do I know what other kids their age really know. Anyway, all four kids were pretty different from one another. N would go from being incredibly shy to comfortable enough to grab my hand or arm and lead me somewhere. K didn’t say anything on her own the whole class, but smiled the entire time. M1 guessed 100 for nearly every question asked of him (except how many brothers and sisters I had, where he answered 50 each). M2 wouldn’t really say anything or look at me, but he got questions right the quickest although he kept writing them in Kanji. I don’t know how often I will teach that class, but it seems like something I will enjoy.

My Job Outside the Classroom

When I’m not in a classroom I’m at my desk in the staffroom, and this is usually where I’m asked for help by one of my JTEs. These are the kind of questions I have gotten:

“Which is better: I like to sing when I am happy, or When I am happy, I like to sing?”

“Which is right: it was rainy, it was raining, or it rained?”

“My [shoe] size is 23 in Japan, what does that mean for this? [points to a picture of a Birkenstock that is measured in European sizes]“

It has been interesting, but not exactly what I expected.